1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for monitoring, tracking and controlling a communication satellite which operates in space, specifically, to the development of a software tool for computing, in a PC environment, remaining fuel quantity in a satellite GEO (Geostationary Earth Orbit) during a mission life or in the mission planning stage.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In order to compute the amount of fuel remaining in a satellite according to satellite's orbit and altitude control scheme, a satellite operator has calculated the amount of fuel consumed, through scrutinized analyses from the point when the satellite starts to operate, using telemetered data extracted from each of function blocks (for example, orbit estimation and control block, and attitude control block) of a satellite mission analysis system and propulsion system. During this process, the operator obtains the amount of remaining fuel at a specific point of time, by repeating the calculation procedure using data of the satellite, which is continuously varied, for example, the amount of fuel consumed, satellite velocity variation, the variation in injection pressure of a thruster used for the satellite.
However, if input data is omitted once, it seriously affects the subsequent calculation of remaining fuel quantity, to make difficult tracing the cause of computational error. Accordingly, the operator has difficulty in carrying out the satellite mission analysis. Furthermore, in term of the characteristic of the calculation, the telemetered data is continuously operated on dynamic software, having connection with each other. This consumes much time for obviously arranging a great deal of data accumulated, and converting it to mission analysis and estimation information.